gers
well above his head, precisely twenty-five centimetres apart, and
pressing their tips against the wall of the Credit Lyonnais. Then the
three friends slipped out of the crowd and pursued their way.

'Let us go to the theatre,' said the experimenter, 'and when we come
back I warrant you will agree with my remarks on Bureaucracy.'

They went to hear the admirable marble lines of Corneille. For three
hours they were absorbed by the classics, and, when they returned, a
crowd, now enormous, was surging all over the Boulevard, stopping the
traffic and filled with a noise like the sea. Policemen were attacking
it with the utmost energy, but still it grew and eddied; and in the
centre--a little respectful space kept empty around him--still
stretched the poor little fat elderly man, a pitiable sight. His knees
were bent, his head wagged and drooped with extreme fatigue, he was
the colour of old blotting-paper; but still he kept the tips of his
two forefingers exactly twenty-five centimetres apart, well above his
head, and pressed against the wall of the Credit Lyonnais.

'You will not match that with your aristocratic sentiment!' said the
author of the scene in pardonable triumph.

'I am not so sure,' answered the Duke of Sussex. He pulled out his
watch. 'It is midnight,' he said, 'and I must be off; but let me tell
you before we part that you have paid for a most expensive dinner, and
have behaved all night with an extravagant deference under the
impression that I was the Duke of Sussex. As a fact my name is Jerks,
and I am a commercial traveller in the linseed oil line; and I wish
you the best of good evenings.'

'Wait a moment,' said the Man in the Big Fur Coat; 'my theory of the
Simple Human Sense of Authority still holds. I am a detective officer,
and you will both be good enough to follow me to the police station.'

And so they did, and the Engineer was fined fifty francs in
correctional, and the Duke of Sussex was imprisoned for ten days, with
interdiction of domicile for six months; the first indeed under the
Prefectorial Decree of the 18th of November 1843, but the second under
the law of the 12th germinal of the year VIII.

In this way I have got over between twenty and thirty miles of road
which were tramped in the dark, and the description of which would
have plagued you worse than a swarm of hornets.

Oh, blessed interlude! no struggling moon, no mist, no long-winded
passages upon the genial earth, no